Theology and Social Commentary

Month: December 2014

My wife belongs to a FaceBook group called South Peninsula Moms in which someone was asking where to get a ‘smudging’ specialist for her new house. I thought it was a paint technique, but it turns out that it is a spiritual thing in which someone waves burning sage and visualises blessings upon the house, and then cleansing of the house and good luck results.

The problem with this sort of thing is that it promises good luck and spiritual freedom–and gives you the illusion that you’re taking control of spiritual things–but it ends up putting you into deeper bondage, because every time something undesirable happens, you have to wonder what spirit you have to appease or what force you forgot to unlock, and you’re stuck paying some huckster to wave smoke at your problems. And you’re forced to believe that the same spirit powerful enough to bring luck to your house is also gullible enough to be paid off with a sage offering.

Say what you want about Christianity, but about similar impulses in the 1st century, it says, ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.’ (Galatians 5:1). Plus it is offering relationship with the Creator, not maybe some good luck via some underling (if you pay).

He manages to set aside the inevitable griping about its accuracy and to judge it for what it is actually trying to say. The review helped me to understand why Scott made the movie and why he did so with so little concern for preservation of the biblical account. Good read.